Cinco de Kittens!

This blog post was five days late on purpose.

Exactly one year ago I ended up with a bunch of kittens. Not just your average age kittens like someone is trying to give away, these were dependent orphans.  A stray cat had some kittens and, unfortunately, got hit by a car. A coworker of a coworker is how I ended up with them. I did lots of research before taking them on. Still, there was lots I didn't expect.

Like the fact that they had all watched The Ring.

The lives of five little kittens were suddenly my responsibility. They were two weeks old (the picture above is from the day we got them, I do believe). I went in not expecting a single one to live. When the first one latched on and sucked part of the bottle down I had a good feeling. I felt even better when I got them to pee and, later, poop (I was always relieved to see them poop, which is probably the weird.)

Did you know Walmart carries tiny bottles and kitten milk replacer? I didn't either. Soon, I had making bottles of formula down to a science, feeding them every 4-6 hours. This went on for days, then weeks.

Four boys and one girl. Usually our kittens have a theme to their names, their theme was the letter X: Max, Drexel, Xero, Hex, and Pixel.

I still remember when they first began to play. It started as half-hearted bapping at each other, then wrestling.

"What do you mean you're not my real mom?"

They they got mobile enough that we had to start building fortifications. The baby gate we bought didn't last long before they began climbing it. Walls of Rubbermaid tubs and cardboard were built higher and more complex as they bested the previous versions.

No surface was sacred.

They had the run of an unfinished studio apartment.

Their claws grew sharp, and they became aggressive about eating. Soon, I had to wear a leather glove just to feed them, like a falconer of kittens.

The first night I didn't check on them once I sat in my house, listening to the quiet, wondering what to do with all of this time I suddenly had.

Occasionally I would watch movies with them. B-Grade movies à la Rifftrax was my culturing for them.

Which is probably why they chitter at the voice of Mike Nelson.

Soon, like all my kitties, they graduated to the outdoors.

I may be crazy and have lots of cats, but I ain't no lady.

This was the last photo of all of them together.

No, one did not die.

I had known a long time, from litters previous, that suckling for kittens is more than a food response, it is also a comfort one, like a pacifier to a human baby. What happens when you provide food, but not a pacifier? They turn to the only other thing that reminds them of their mother: Each other.

I learned the hard way that, apparently, male kitten anatomy tends to get, erm, suckled on. It was funny initially and I expected them to grow out of it, or at least the victim kitten would get old enough to knock some sense into the suckler. Out of the two of them, only one grew out of it. Unfortunately, the other one didn't. He was relocated to my parents house where he terrorizes their clowder to this day.

Even after subtracting one they got too big to all fit in my lap at once.

Despite not having a mother to teach them to hunt they managed very well. All of them were spayed and neutered because, after that much commitment, they sure as heck better not be going anywhere. The only weirdness different than other cats is the Pavlovian response to leather now.

Of course, with the spring comes a higher mortality rate. I still have two of them with me, and I gave them more time to experience life than they would have had otherwise.

That, and I have gained the most photogenic cat ever:

SO

GORRAM

PHOTOGENIC